90 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



" The Sgah-ah-so-wah is wandering, the Indian knows its trail in 

 the winds, the Witch Hawk !" But the sun went on with its summer 

 day, and the dews were falling when O-gas-hah had ended her 

 toil in the maize field, and turning to bind her burden strap across 

 her shoulders, she discovered her child was not there! 



With a cry of terror she fled to her home, wailing to the skies 

 " It was you, Sgah-ah-so-wah, it was you, the Witch Hawk! You 

 have taken my child!" And entering to the sad desolation of her 

 lodge, O-gas-hah shut herself in with the night and her wild lamen- 

 tations. 



The Witch Hawk it was who had taken her child and carried 

 it to a dense woods where he left it to die. 



By his power to transform to a human, as a warrior the Witch 

 Hawk had once wooed O-gas-hah who, in her strange distrust, 

 had scorned him, and now he had wounded her with a weapon 

 more subtle than death. 



The night dews fell on the child, the dawn sun had gleamed 

 down upon it, and a next day was in its deep shadows when a bear, 

 prowling through the dense place, came upon it and thinking it 

 was a young cub, carried it to its cave in a north shelter, where 

 the cool winds fled from the sun. 



Years passed. The infant, now grown to womanhood and still 

 nourished by the bears, had never known she was a human being 

 until one morning there came a hunter who related to her the won- 

 ders of another life in the world, where humans dwelt. It was 

 the Witch Hawk, who had transformed to a hunter, and by his 

 enticing endowed her with his own baneful powers; and teaching 

 her the ways of his invisible trails, the revengeful bird led her 

 away, and guided her back to O-gas-hah's lodge near the maize 

 field. 



Attired in the doeskin, her feet sheathed in porcupined moccasins, 

 and her long hair braided with long grasses, the Hawk led her, 

 and well he knew the way, to the door of the lodge where O-gas-hah 

 was crooning a child's song, a child song of the long ago of her 

 desolation in the maize field. 



When the sad O-gas-hah saw the beautiful maid, a strange thrill 

 crept through her heart as she bade her welcome and, with true 

 Indian hospitality, shared her home with her, calling her Gwi-yee; 

 and O-gas-hah learned to love the stranger, yet there seemed an 

 artful secrecy always hovering around her that palled like a shadow 

 within and without. 



Gwi-yee had strange vanishings. She would suddenly disappear 



